A Modern Farmhouse in Austria

In a village, a dairy farmer and his wife employ an architect known for sustainable architecture to build a minimalist, environmentally friendly home—with an original barn still attached

By

J.S. Marcus

Jan. 17, 2013 7:59 p.m. ET

Bizau, Austria

Low-tech meets high-tech in the Bregenzerwald, a mountainous region in the far west of Austria where traditional dairy farmers share their villages with employees from the area's electronics and service sectors. In the throes of a progressive, wood-based architecture movement, the area readily combines sustainable goals with a sleek minimalist look. And a new Bregenzerwald farmhouse built for a dairy farmer in Bizau, a village of around 1,000 people, would not be out of place in Seattle or Stockholm.

A Modern Farmhouse

The new house of Josef and Agathe Moosbrugger in Bizau, Austria. Elisabeth Real for The Wall Street Journal

The home captures tradition and modernity in one structure. Directly attached to the residential section is a barn with 18th-century foundations—budget compromises meant that the 1,500-square-foot barn was left untouched, and a firewall blocks it off from the new home. Owners Josef and Agathe Moosbrugger say they think of the barn as a new section waiting in the wings.

Completed in 2011, the other end of the structure is a four-story, 4,000-square-foot house with under-floor heating, solar panels, low-energy appliances and the latest in triple-glazed windows. It also has clean-lined, light-filled rooms, which can accommodate century-old wooden furniture and new, industrial-style light fixtures. Open kitchens and living areas are marked by natural ash floors and fir walls, which can work in pleasing contrast with the metallic shine from a new hanging lamp and chrome-lined cooking areas; a set of urbane kitchen cupboards is black. Walls of windows fill the rooms with daylight.

"Our previous house was much darker," says Mr. Moosbrugger, 62, who in addition to farming is a former longtime mayor of Bizau and, for the past decade, a representative in the parliament of Austria's Vorarlberg region. He adds that "transparency" has become a "psychological" as well as an architectural value in his corner of Austria. Before, he says, villagers wanted "more anonymity," living behind small windows with drawn curtains. Now, he says, people want more light, even if that means more gazes from the neighbors.

The light-filled minimalist look has practical implications—large, south-facing, triple-glazed windows let in warming light without losing heat. But the house's stripped-down facade is the result of a purely aesthetic decision, says Mr. Moosbrugger. Early on, the couple thought about using wooden shingles, which are common in the region, but they went instead with naked wood.

The three-bedroom, three-bathroom house consists of three upper floors, each with its own apartment-like layout. The layout promotes privacy for the couple and their two adult children.

Cornelia, 33, who works at a local bakery, lives on the first upper floor; Mr. Moosbrugger and his wife live on the second. The top floor is home to the couple's younger son, 25-year-old Matthias, who works at a bank in a nearby town. (An older son, who recently took over management of the family's dairy farm, lives in the Moosbruggers' previous home next door.) The three apartments share an impressive stairwell, which functions as a multilevel foyer and common room.

Two of the floors have kitchens with inductive stoves and double ovens, one of which uses steam heat. "Nearly all new kitchens around here have steam ovens," says Ms. Moosbrugger, 57, who sees the appliance as a low-fat alternative to the frying pan. The top-floor flat does not have a kitchen, but the connections are there in case the Moosbruggers' son moves out and they decide to convert it into a separate apartment to rent out in the tourist season.

Mr. and Mrs. Moosbrugger bought the property in 2000. The existing structure, like many in the region, was a hodgepodge, with a three-story house connected to a barn. The building dated back to the 18th century, but a mid-20th-century fire meant that everything but the basement had been rebuilt.

The Moosbruggers, who lived next door, spent a decade deciding what to do with the property. (Their former house—now home to Mr. Moosbrugger's nonagenarian father in addition to their oldest son—combines with the new one to create a de facto Moosbrugger compound.) "We kept going back and forth, figuring out how we could bring this up to a modern standard," says Mr. Moosbrugger.

Mr. Moosbrugger had the good fortune to have a long-standing relationship with Hermann Kaufmann, a carpenter's son from a nearby village who grew up to become a well-known pioneer of sustainable architecture. Now based in Schwarzach, a city near the regional capital of Bregenz, Mr. Kaufmann, 57, is known for his innovative approach to wood, which he has used for everything from multi-story office buildings and luxury homes to kindergartens and covered bridges. Early on when designing a home, says Mr. Kaufmann, "I always ask, 'How will the house be heated?' "

The Moosbruggers brought a special solution to the heating problem: a private forest. This not only supplied them with much of the building material, but also remains a ready and free source of fuel, which they fire up in ceramic wood-burning stoves. (Mr. Kaufmann says that new wood-burning stoves are more environmentally friendly than earlier incarnations.)

Heat from the stoves supplements the boiler-fed under-floor heating; the boiler, in turn, is powered by solar panels, weather permitting. Mr. Moosbrugger says that his total energy costs—in a climate with five-month winters and huge snowfalls—amount to a $53 monthly electricity bill.

The house cost about $664,000 to build and furnish, he says. Due to their house's low energy requirements, the Moosbruggers received an interest-free mortgage on about $266,000 of the building costs, part of a government scheme to promote energy efficiency in Vorarlberg. After five years, the interest rises to a nominal 0.5 %. In Reuthe, a nearby village, a 1,700-square-foot, eco-friendly wooden house built in 2005 is currently asking $600,000.

Mr. Moosbrugger says that the family thinks of the structure as a single-family home, but one with a great deal of flexibility. "Everyone can retreat to their own space," he says, or meet up when and how they wish. A ground-level space, now used for storage and occasional gatherings, can be converted into an apartment for the couple's retirement, when they might no longer be able to manage the stairs.

And Mr. Moosbrugger had thought about a free-standing bathtub, but they are "incredibly expensive."

Instead, he says, "I wanted a bathtub, and I wanted it near the window, because it's so beautiful when it snows. I have both."

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